NOUVELLES NOUVELLES SUMMER 2016 IN THIS ISSUE:

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1 NOUVELLES NOUVELLES SUMMER 2016 IN THIS ISSUE: The 50th Anniversary Celebration GREETINGS from the Director Shakespeare s Day: 1616/2016 A Look at Latin Retrograde Verse CMRS Courses for Autumn 2016

2 CONTENTS FALL 2016 FILM SERIES: In preparation for our 4th Annual Conference on Popular Culture and the Deep Past in February 2017, the Autumn 2016 Film Series features Harry Potter. Tuesday, August 23 7PM Hagerty 180 Harry Potter and the Philosopher s Stone Tuesday, September 13 Tuesday, October 4 Tuesday, November 1 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 7PM Hagerty 455B 7PM Hagerty 455B 7PM Hagerty 455B

3 NOUVELLES NOUVELLES SUMMER 2016 CENTER FOR MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES DIRECTOR Graeme M. Boone ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Leslie Lockett PROGRAM COORDINATOR Nicholas Spitulski GRADUATE ASSOCIATES Travis Neel Miriam Rudavsky-Brody Nouvelles Nouvelles is published by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and is also available in pdf at Please contact for more information. The Ohio State University 455 Hagerty Hall 1775 College Road Columbus, OH Tel: Fax: World Wide Web The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies is an interdisciplinary center in the College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University. Its central mission is to foster interaction among faculty, students, and the public around themes involving the study of history, culture, society, technology, intellectual thought, and the arts from late Antiquity to the early modern era. With course curriculum, together with lectures, of interest to local, regional, national, and international audiences. Affiliated with the Medieval Academy of America, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Folger Institute, the CMRS contributes to national and international discourses on the place of medieval, Renaissance, and early modern studies in the academy and in society more generally. In addition to this Newsletter, the Center offers courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, an undergraduate program and Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization, a series of lectures and colloquia, graduate administrative and teaching associateships, and other activities and events during the academic year. It also aspires to serve as a resource for medievalists and Renaissance scholars at other institutions throughout the state. CMRS at 50 It was with great anticipation that we approached CMRS s celebration of our fiftieth anniversary year of existence, taking place on November 5, 2016 in the elegant Ohio Staters Room of Thompson Library. As many of you know, our organization was founded in the Autumn of 1965 by an interdisciplinary group of faculty with support and seed money from the University, and it seemed appropriate in 2015 to reflect on the now long-standing tradition of CMRS at Ohio State with scholarly discussions as well as a grand reception for our friends and affiliates. Following initial comments by Peter Hahn (Divisional Dean, College of Arts and Humanities) and CMRS Director Graeme Boone, the scholarly portion of the event was organized into three sequential round tables, addressing the topics of the past, present, and future of the CMRS. On the CMRS Past panel were directors emeriti Barbara Hanawalt (History) and Richard Green (English); interim-director emerita Anna Grotans (Germanic Languages); David Frantz (English), secretary emeritus of the University and early supporter of the CMRS mandate; and Predrag Matejic, director of the Research Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, a long-standing collaborator and Advisory Committee member of CMRS. They shared numerous memories of the recent and the old days, discussing the growth of the Center, and the remarkable enthusiasm, commitment, and creative activity of its administration and affiliates throughout its history. On the CMRS Present panel were Eric Johnson (Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, University Library), Pasha Johnson (Associate Curator of the Hilandar Research Library), Daniel Frank (Near Eastern Languages), and Alan Farmer (English), all of whom have been active collaborators and supporters of the CMRS mission. They spoke about the wide variety of current CMRS activities, in our curriculum, our faculty, student, and departmental outreach, our various events, and our participation in national and international programs. On the CMRS Future panel were Karl Whittington (Art History), Sam White (History), Jonathan Combs-Schilling (French and Italian), Mary Kate Hurley (English, from Ohio University), and Robey Patrick (Spanish and Portuguese). They spoke with enthusiasm and optimism about current and future developments at CMRS, involving curricular and programmatic outreach, new scholarly directions, and a fast-evolving academic environment in which forward-looking innovation will be crucial. The festivities continued with a reception in the adjoining conference room, featuring sparkling wines and artisanal breads, cheeses, pastries, and other delights from local vendors. A highlight of the reception was our recognition of Barbara Hanawalt for her wonderfully generous gift to the CMRS, permitting the establishment of a secure endowment for our annual Public Lecture. Summer 2016 Nouvelles Nouvelles 3

4 GREETINGS Dear readers, GREETINGS from the DIRECTOR It was an exciting time at CMRS this past year, as the diversity and delight of our various events outstripped even the unpredictable shifts of weather on campus through the seasons. As predicted in my Autumn greeting, the CMRS Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration of November 5 proved to be an extraordinary occasion, marking a signal moment in the history of the Center with fifteen panelists speaking on three round tables about CMRS Past, Present, and Future. The ensuing reception was as joyous as it was delectable, with the honoring of Barbara Hanawalt for her extraordinarily generous gift to the Center in support of its annual Public Lecture, and with the official launching of the Friends of the CMRS, a new group that will include emeritus faculty as well as others from the local community to promote interest in the Center and its diverse medieval, Renaissance, and early modern activities. Photographs of the event were provided in our last issue; for more information on the celebration, please see the discussion in this Newsletter. Our MRGSA lecturer for this year, Jane Hwang Degenhardt (Department of English, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst), visited in late November to elucidate with remarkable insight the shifting perception of Fortune across the Renaissance, drawing connections between the diverse worlds of art, commerce, literature, and seafaring. Florence Eliza Glaze (History, Coastal Carolina University), visiting in early December, described her close study of medical sources written between late Antiquity and the Salernitan school of the central Middle Ages, to illustrate how their close study can yield a better understanding of the transmission of ancient learning and its transformations in the medieval world. 4 Nouvelles Nouvelles Summer 2016 During the Spring term, E. Jane Burns (Women s Studies and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, emerita) visited in March to present her research on the folkloric and literary medieval character of Melusine, in what she poignantly characterized as the last lecture of her career as a medievalist. Owing to an unexpected conflict, Aden Kumler (Art History, University of Chicago) was unable to visit as had been planned in April; but in a serendipitous turn, Felix Heinzer (Medieval Latin, Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg, emeritus) was able to fly to Columbus in her stead to present a rich and wideranging discussion of liturgical manuscripts and their relation to ideology, materiality, and cultural practice across the Middle Ages. Our Spring-term Medieval and Renaissance curriculum included courses on Gothic Paris (taught by Kristen Figg,

5 CMRS), Travel and Exploration (Robey Patrick, Spanish and Portuguese), Arthurian Legends (Karen Winstead, English), and, for the Senior Seminar, the Little Ice Age of the early seventeenth century (Sam White, History). Our film series featured film adaptations of Shakespeare plays, hosted by Travis Neel, Leslie Lockett, Eric Brinkman, Robey Clark Patrick, and Hannibal Hamlin. The film series was coordinated to Shakespeare s Day, this year s manifestation of our annual Popular Culture and the Deep Past series, which took place on February This event, the grandest so far, brought together over fifty academic presentations and thirty nonacademic ones, and incorporated this year s CMRS Public Lecture, delivered by Rob Henke (Performing Arts, Washington University in St. Louis), as well as a Bash at the Gateway Theater. An overview of the proceedings is given elsewhere in this Newsletter. At the beginning and also end of March, many of our faculty and graduate students traveled to Boston to attend and present at the annual conferences of Medieval Academy of America and the Renaissance Society of America; in mid-may, many of our affiliates drove to Kalamazoo for the great annual Medieval Congress. Their contributions to these events are briefly noted in the interdisciplinary conferences column in this Newsletter. After the yearly meeting of CARA (the Committee on Regional Centers and Associations of the Medieval Academy), your Director was nominated to serve a three-year term on the Executive Committee, thanks in part to our recent achievements here at Ohio State. In mid-april, we welcomed an international group of historians and anthropologists to Columbus for an extraordinary symposium on transatlantic foodways in the early-modern era, also discussed in a separate column in this Newsletter. A highlight of the symposium was the keynote lecture by Allen J. Grieco (senior researcher at the Villa I Tatti, Florence), which served as this year s Utley Lecture, co-sponsored, as every year, by the Center for the Study of Folklore. All in all, this has been another banner year for the Center. Now that the summer season has arrived, let us to follow our pleasures, academic and otherwise, as Guilhem IX, the first troubadour, advised so many seasons ago: Pos vezem de novel florir Pratz, e vergiers reverdezir Rius e fontanas esclarzir Auras e vens Ben deu chascus lo joi jauzir Don es jauzens. Sincerely, ely, As we see again the flowering Of fields, and gardens growing green, Streams and fountains brightening, Breezes and winds, Each should enjoy the joy That makes him joyful. Graeme M. Boone Director, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies OHIO MEDIEVAL COLLOQUIUM The Ohio Medieval Colloquium is an informal association of medievalists from throughout the state, co-founded by Kristen Figg and John B. Friedman. There are, as Professor Friedman likes to say, no dues and no constitution. Even the membership is virtual, consisting of an list passed from one chair to the next. If you would like to join, all you have to do is send your address to one of our current co-chairs: Mark Bocija, Columbus State Community College: mbocija@cscc.edu Tim Davis, Columbus State Community College: tdavis@cscc.edu Gabrielle Parkin, Case Western Reserve University: glp24@case.edu The Colloquium holds two oneday meetings per year; the Spring Meeting is traditionally held in the Columbus area and the Fall Meeting somewhere on the periphery of the state. Meetings generally begin in late morning and end in the late afternoon to enable those with a long drive ahead of them to get home; those who can stay later are welcome to gather for a congenial dinner at a local restaurant. Calls for papers generally go out six weeks or so before each meeting and papers on any aspect of medieval history or culture are welcome. Summer 2016 Nouvelles Nouvelles 5

6 Shakespeare s Day Shakespeare s Day, this year s theme for our annual Popular Culture and the Deep Past conference series, took place on February It proved to be the grandest event in the multi-year series thus far, with over fifty academic papers and thirty non-academic presentations, discussions, recitals, exhibits, and activities, presented over two days, in celebration of the works and world of Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death. Scholars from Ohio State and other universities, including faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates, presented on topics regarding Shakespeare in relation to music, pedagogy, theatre, dance, costume, iconography, comics, television, and cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, China, and Japan. At the end of each day, a keynote address provided a particular highlight and conclusion for the gathered crowd. Thus, on Friday evening, Rob Henke (Performing Arts, Washington University of St. Louis), this year s CMRS Public Lecturer, regaled us with his evocation of the commedia dell arte in Shakespeare; incorporated into the performance of his lecture were the unpredictably delightful antics of the Confused Greenies, an active commedia dell arte troupe from Case Western Reserve University, under the direction of Jess Rudolph. On Saturday afternoon, Jeremy Smith (Music, University of Colorado at Boulder) concluded the conference with a second keynote lecture that drew vital and hitherto unsuspected 3rd Annual CMRS Conference on Popular Culture and the Deep Past - Shakespeare s Day: 1616/2016 connections between final scene of Romeo and Juliet and the grand musical composition that concludes William Byrd s polyphonic Psalms, Sonets and Songs of Sadness and Pietie (1588). In musical illustration of his paper, Smith was joined by Fior Angelico, a Columbus-based Renaissance polyphonic vocal ensemble, directed by Ohio State alumnus Matthew Bester, who gave a moving rendition of Byrd s five-voice masterpiece. Within and around the academic presentations, a wealth of activities unfolded that evoked the broader world of Shakespeare and its connection to ours today. Leslie Lockett, Hannibal Hamlin, and Jessica Rutherford discussed food cultures of the sixteenth century in England and Portugal, providing their own artisanal creations of cheese, meat pie, and salt-cod soup for tasting by the audience. Ron and Janice Cook, surrounded by a panoply of musical instruments, 6 Nouvelles Nouvelles Summer 2016 Pictured above, from left: Sarah Dunlap (OSU, English) and Oliver Kennedy (University at Buffalo, SUNY). Pictured opposite: two displays from Saturday s session on food and foodways in the age of Shakespeare; Hannibal Hamlin (OSU, English) presents Feasting in Shakespeare ; Jared Gardner (OSU, English) presents on Shakespeare and modern comics; and attendees enjoy an afternoon feast.

7 Shakespeare s Day gave colorful performances of music from Shakespeare s era; members of the Calligraphy Guild of Columbus penned and explained Renaissance script types; local vendors demonstrated the traditional arts of woodworking, spinning, and apothecary. Eric Johnson and Pasha Johnson (University Library) and Beth Kattelman (Theatre) mounted exhibitions of Shakespeare-related early book editions and theatrical artworks. Sarah Dunlap (English), joined by fellow alumni Chris Rockwell and Oliver Kennedy of the Ithaca chapter of the Ring of Steel Theatrical Combat and Stunt Troupe, demonstrated Shakespearean stage swordfighting. David Sweeten (English) led a workshop on dances of Shakespeare s time. Sarah Neville (English) gave a special noontime lecture on editing Shakespeare; Elizabeth Harelik (Theatre) led a workshop on performing Shakespearean plays; and Jennifer Higginbotham (English) organized a reading of all of Shakespeare s sonnets across several hours, in which many faculty and students participated. Summer 2016 Nouvelles Nouvelles 7

8 Shakespeare s Day On Saturday evening, following the end of the conference, we adjourned to the nearby Gateway Theatre for a Shakespeare Bash, where we enjoyed special ales from standout local brewers Barley s and Wolf s Ridge; breads from Dan the Baker; leek and pear pies from Dough Mama; pastries from Patisserie Lallier; and traditional meats and vegetables from City Barbecue, before enjoying a private screening of the late-2015 lavish film rendition of Macbeth, directed by Justin Kurzel and starring Michael Fassbender, with an introductory lecture by John Umland, the Gateway s engaging V.P. of Operations and an enthusiastic connoisseur of modern film. 8 Nouvelles Nouvelles Summer 2016

9 Shakespeare s Day Above: John Gustafson (left) works on a carving, and Lily Kunning from Boline Apothecary (right, seated) speaks with a Shakespeare s Day guest. Previous page (clockwise, from top right): Pasha Johnson (OSU, Hilandar Research Library) talks about medieval manuscripts with guests; Sharon Mech provides a fiber arts demo; Ron and Janice Cook, formerly of The Early Interval ensemble, give a performance; Judy Mueller of the Calligraphy Guild of Columbus demonstrates a script; one of many posters designed for the days festivities. Calling all Wizards, Goblins, House-Elves, and Muggles! The 4th Annual Conference on Popular Culture and the Deep Past invites explorations of J.K. Rowling s beloved Harry Potter series. An official call for participants will be forthcoming soon, so mark your calendars to join us at the Ohio Union at The Ohio State University in February 2017! #PCDP4 Summer 2016 Nouvelles Nouvelles 9

10 Latin RETRO Retrograde 10 Nouvelles Nouvelles Summer 2016 Verse: Metrical Wordplay that Hides in Plain Sight Do you have a favorite palindrome? My favorite is Tu l as trop écrasé, César, ce Port-Salut. Translated into English, this means, César! The Port-Salut cheese, you have squashed it too much! But only in French is it a palindrome: when you read it backwards, letter by letter, it remains the same as when you read it forwards. The palindrome is just one of many forms of constrained writing that are cultivated by the French collective known as OULIPO, which is short for Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle ( Workshop of Potential Literature ), founded in While poets who write sonnets and limericks adhere to formal constraints so conventional that we scarcely think of them as constraints, OULIPO, in contrast, engages playfully with more stringently and ostentatiously constrained forms: the palindrome, for instance, or the lipogram, which completely avoids certain letters. The sentence Bold Ostrogoths show no horror of ghosts is a lipogram that permits no vowels except o, though this pales in comparison with Georges Perec s novel La disparition, a 300-page lipogram that never uses the letter e. Another characteristically OULIPian practice is to compose poetry constrained by mathematical formulas. For example, the N+7 method of composition begins with an existing poem and then replaces every noun with the seventh noun that follows it in a dictionary. Take, for example, John Milton s Song on a May Morning, which begins, Now the bright morning star, Day s harbinger, / Comes dancing from the east, and so forth. In the hands of OULIPO emulator Paul Taylor, the N+7 technique applied to Milton s Song generates a poem in which the industrial and the culinary encroach on the pastoral in a manner that is charmingly incongruous: Now the bright mortgaged starter, dealer s hardware, Comes dancing from the echo, and leads with her The flow ry meal, who from her green lard throws The yellow cracker and the pale printer. Hail, bounteous meal, that dost inspire Misbehaviour and zephyrs and warm despondency! You may be thinking that the cultivation of these and other experimental prose and verse forms springs from a peculiarly modern impulse. If so, think again. Palindromes, trick poems, and other obscure word games have a history over 2200 years long in the West, and this history is little known to students of classical, medieval, and Renaissance literature. Scholars use the German word Versspielereien, verse frivolities, as an umbrella term encompassing a variety of playfully constrained poems originating in the classical and medieval periods. One of the showiest practitioners of Versspielereien was Optatianus Porfyrius, who composed Latin poetry for the court of the Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century CE. One of his poems exhibits a different constraint in almost every one of its fifteen lines, analogous to a needlework sampler: for instance, one hexameter is composed entirely of two-syllable words, another entirely of fivesyllable words; one hexameter includes one word representing each of the eight parts of speech. The final seven lines of Optatian s sampler are specimens of retrograde verse, which can be read both backwards and forwards, word by word; retrograde verses are distinct from palindromes, which are reversed letter by letter. When retrograde verses are read backwards, both the meaning of the words and the meter of the line remain viable although they may not remain

11 exactly the same. I regard retrograde verse as a sorely underappreciated type of Versspielerei, and I have begun work on a book covering the whole history of the genre, from Sotades, an Alexandrian poet of the third century BCE, through the modern era. My opinion of retrograde verse is considerably more sympathetic than the prevailing view: critics as diverse as the Latin epigrammatist Martial (1st- 2nd century CE) and Anglo-American modernist W.H. Auden ( ) have scorned retrograde verses as a tedious and artificial art form. And so in defense of retrograde verses, I offer a brief synopsis of their most entertaining characteristics. 1. They can be made to read one thing going forwards and the opposite going backwards. The earliest surviving retrograde verses, and many medieval specimens as well, are insults disguised as compliments: as written in manuscripts, they profess admiration or good wishes, but when read backwards, they turn into insults or curses. Consider this elegiac couplet, preserved as a fifteenthcentury addition to Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 53: Condicio tua stet longo non tempore parvo: vivere te faciat hinc Deus omnipotens! [May your marriage last for a long, not a short, time: may God almighty grant you henceforwar to live!] as well. RETRO Which brings us to another feature of retrograde poems: 2. They hide in plain sight. Unlike most other Versspielereien, retrograde poems do not loudly broadcast their trick characteristics. This is useful not only for delivering clandestine insults but also for making the author seem ridiculously clever: you read a seemingly ordinary piece of poetry only to find an inscription at the end instructing you to try it backwards, and eureka! It s a retrograde. One of the most incredible examples of this phenomenon is a fifteenth-century sequence (a song performed before the reading of the Gospel during the Mass) about the life of St. Lebuin, an early medieval missionary. The poem employs the most common rhythm used in later medieval sequence texts; if you read the first stanza aloud to yourself, you can hear the singsong rhythm: Lebuine confessorum, precellens flos qui polorum regna scandis ardua: Linquens orbem ualidorum, cor plenum portasti morum. Tu pandis miracula. [O Lebuin, excellent flower among confessors, who climb the lofty kingdoms of the heavens! When you left the world of the living, you bore a heart full of virtues; you reveal miracles.] But when this benediction is reversed word-byword, parvo little becomes attached to vivere to live rather than tempore time, and non now negates longo long instead of parvo. The translation of the backwards couplet reads May God almighty grant you to live a short while henceforward: may your marriage last for not a long time! Since the text appears to be an entirely ordinary elegiac couplet, a reader (or addressee) would remain innocent of the embedded insult unless he or she were informed bluntly that the couplet could be read backwards Tu l as trop écrasé, César, ce Port-Salut. (César! The Port- Salut cheese, you have squashed it too much!) The marvel that surfaces when this text is reversed lies not in its meaning (which remains roughly the same) but in its metrical form: it becomes quantitative dactylic hexameters instead of short rhythmic lines. Miracula pandis; tu morum portasti plenum cor ualidorum orbem linquens. Ardua scandis regna polorum, qui flos precellens confessorum Lebuine. Summer 2016 Nouvelles Nouvelles 11

12 RETRO The composer of this sequence text may have concealed his genius too well, however. In the fifteenth-century manuscript now known as Darmstadt, Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, Hs 521, there survives a brief (and probably fabricated) anecdote about the reason why the poet composed his text in retrograde verse, as well as instructions about how to read the poem backwards. But the poem survives in four more manuscripts and four early printed editions, all of them liturgical books used in the preparation for or celebration of the Mass. In each of these copies, all evidence of the poem s retrograde nature has been completely effaced. In other words, Lebuine confessorum is one of the most widely disseminated retrograde poems to survive, but the vast majority of people who encountered it were entirely unaware of its retrograde nature. It bears mention that the author of Lebuine confessorum must have been a poet of exceptional resourcefulness; getting short rhythmic verses to turn into long quantitative verses would have been quite difficult to sustain over the space of sixty lines. However, some poets were able to establish the illusion of such virtuosity without having to solve as many metrical problems as the author of Lebuine confessorum did, which brings us to the third and final feature of retrograde verse that I would like to foreground: 3. A poet could create the illusion that he was a virtuoso by re-using a metrical formula, line after line. In England in the eleventh century, for instance, a certain Osuuoldus composed two poems: one in twenty-one retrograde hexameters, and one in four elegiac couplets. But unlike Optatian or the composer of Lebuine confessorum, this Osuuoldus figured out just one way to make his meters retrogradable and re-used that pattern throughout each poem. For instance, all four of the pentameter lines in his elegiac couplets follow a single pattern: vocibus excelsis sic sibi perplacitis (line 2) debita solventem que pia perficiat (line 4) viribus eternis est iugis altithronus (line 6) omnia subsistunt ut regit omnipatrans (line 8)...getting short rhythmic verses to turn into long quantitative verses would have been quite difficult to sustain over the space of sixty lines. In each, the first word has three syllables, one long and two short; the next word has three syl- 12 Nouvelles Nouvelles Summer 2016 lables, all long; then there follow a long monosyllable and a word consisting of two short syllables; at the end, each four-syllable word begins with one long and two short syllables. With this pattern established, Osuuoldus could easily plug in words to create plenty of viable retrograde verses without much effort. And he seems to have been impressed with his own cleverness: in his longer hexameter poem, Osuuoldus claims (with tongue in cheek) that a poet who can quickly compose many retrograde lines deserves to be called Vergilianus, that is, worthy of comparison with Vergil himself. This formulaic method of composing retrograde verses is most cleverly deployed by John of Garland, whose mid-thirteenth-century textbook on composing prose and verse, entitled Parisiana poetria, sets out four stanzas of densely rhymed, rhythmic verse that turn into elegiac couplets when reversed. Here is the first stanza, in which I ve marked the chief stress accents in each line to help the reader absorb the forceful rhythm of John s verses: Patribus hec ómnibus, genibus curuátis, leuatisque mánibus, pedibus nudátis scríbo. Reading backwards produces a quantitative elegiac couplet that is unremarkable except for its internal rhymes: Scribo nudatis pedibus, manibusque levatis, / curvatis genibus, omnibus hec patribus. It must have been terrifically challenging to figure out a way to integrate these seemingly incompatible verse types into a single retrograde

13 poem; it is not surprising that John of Garland, having devised such a clever trick, deployed it four times in a row rather than just once. Further reading: Dronke, Peter, Michael Lapidge, and Peter Stotz. Die unveröffentlichten Gedichte der Cambridger Liederhandschrift (CUL Gg ). Mittellateinische Jahrbuch 17 (1982): RETRO Department of English Graduate Student Workshop in Medieval Literature Flores, E., and G. Polara. Specimina di analisi applicate a strutture di Versspielerei latina. Rendiconti dell Accademia di archeologia, lettere e belle arti di Napoli 44 (1969): Lockett, Leslie. The Composition and Transmission of a Fifteenth-Century Latin Retrograde Sequence Text from Deventer. Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 53 (2003): Mayer, Kenneth. The Golden Line: Ancient and Medieval Lists of Special Hexameters and Modern Scholarship. In Latin Grammar and Rhetoric: From Classical Theory to Medieval Practice, edited by Carol Dana Lanham, London: Continuum, Motte, Warren, ed. and trans. OULIPO: A Primer of Potential Literature. Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, Submitted by: Leslie Lockett, CMRS Associate Director & Student Advisor; Associate Professor, English In early April, the English Department welcomed Professor Timothy Graham (Director, Institute for Medieval Studies and Regents Professor of Arts and Sciences, University of New Mexico) to campus to lead a Medieval Graduate Workshop and deliver a public lecture. The graduate student workshop, A Testimonie of Antiquitie and the Early Modern Origins of Anglo-Saxon Studies, took place in the Special Collections Classroom in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Thompson Library. His lecture, Shakespeare and the Medieval Book of Beasts, traced the evolution of bestiaries from their ancient roots, through the height of their popularity in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, and up to the early modern period, focusing on several references to bestiary legends in the plays of William Shakespeare. Pictured Left: The audience assembling in Denney Hall 311 as Professor Timothy Graham prepares for his lecture, Shakespeare and the Medieval Book of Beasts. Pictured Above: Professor Christopher A. Jones (OSU, English) introduces Professor Graham. Summer 2016 Nouvelles Nouvelles 13

14 FOODWAYS CMRS Foodways Symposium In mid-april, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies welcomed an international group of historians and anthropologists to Columbus for the extraordinary symposium, A Trans-Atlantic Perspective on Early-Modern Foodways (15th 18th centuries). Prior to the symposium proper, we took our guests, plus other interested faculty and students, on a tour of the Newark Earthworks (which many of our readers will know as the largest geometric earthworks system in the world, constructed by native Ohioans early in the first millenium CE), guided by experts Brad Lepper and Marti Chaatsmith, who offered the complementary perspectives of an archaeologist and a Native American, respectively, including discussion of early Native American foods and foodways. Christine Ballengee-Morris, Director of the Indian Studies Program at Ohio State, contributed her own extensive personal and professional knowledge to the proceedings. The wet and freezing weather seemed only to make more impactful and memorable the experience of these astonishing structures. We then proceeded to the historic Buxton Inn in Granville for a lovely reception and tour of the early-nineteenth-century premises, joined by faculty and administrators from Denison University. On Friday, the symposium began with papers by Davide Domenici (Università di Bologna) on pre-invasion Aztec foodways and Gregorio Saldarriaga (Universidad de Antioquia) on the explanation of New-World fruits by early European commentators; in the afternoon, Michael LaCombe (Adelphi University) spoke on foodways of the first New England and Virginia settlers in relation to their Native American environment, and Rebecca Earle (Warwick University) spoke on Enlightenment theorizations of food in relation to national health and happiness. A keynote address at the end of the day, serving also as this year s Utley Lecture with co-sponsorship from the Center for the Study of Folklore, was given by Allen Grieco (I Tatti Institute for Renaissance Studies), arguably the dean of current European food historians, on the topic of color and taste as key factors in the medical and scientific understanding of New World fruits, vegetables, and wines between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. A delightful reception and dinner followed on Friday evening, in the banquet room of the gourmet Harvest Pizzeria in German Village, capped off by a taste-exploration at Jeni s Ice Cream in the Short North. The symposium concluded on Saturday morning with an informal and illuminating round-table discussion in Thompson Library regarding the scholarship of early-modern foodways. 14 Nouvelles Nouvelles Summer 2016

15 AUTUMN COURSES MEDREN 2516, The Medieval Jewish Experience (JEWSHST 2516/HEBREW 2216) Description: This interdisciplinary GEC course surveys ten centuries of medieval Jewish history, literature, religion, and culture from the rise of Islam to the death of the false messiah, Shabbetai Zvi. Students will read a wide range of primary sources in English translation. We will examine the transformation of Jewish culture in Europe and the Middle East and will explore the impact of host societies upon specific Jewish communities. Lecture: Time: Tues/Thurs 12:45-2:05 Room: University Hall 056 Instructor: Daniel Frank MEDREN 2666, Magic & Witchcraft Description: In this interdisciplinary course, students will explore the history and culture of witchcraft and magic from ca. 400 to 1700 C.E. within sociological, religious, and intellectual contexts. By the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of the practice, persecution, and social construct of magic and witchcraft in the medieval and early modern periods and its far-reaching impact on society. Lecture: Time: Mon/Weds/Fri 11:30-12:25 Room: Journalism Building 300 Instructor: Sarah Iles Johnston MEDREN 4217, Early Modern London: Urban Spaces and Popular Culture Description: This course will explore roughly one and a half centuries of the history, politics, and culture of London, beginning with the religious upheavals of the Protestant Reformation, moving onto a civil war that saw King Charles I lose his head, and culminating with the devastating plague and Great Fire of London in We will begin by studying the factors behind London s phenomenal growth in the sixteenth century, a growth that quickly made the city the center of economic and political life in Britain. By reading a range of primary documents including urban surveys, plays, poems, and pamphlets we will consider the opportunities and problems created by rapid urbanization (social mobility, poverty, disease) as well as the institutions and structures that regulated the life of the city. In our tour of this vibrant metropolis we will encounter an extraordinary range of figures: alongside the great and the good like Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Shakespeare, we will also meet prostitutes, vagabonds, and gulls (!). We will become familiar with the layout and buildings of London, its churches and cathedrals, its palaces and thoroughfares, and of course its iconic river Thames. We will linger especially at the theaters, bear gardens, cockpits, and brothels that made up London s burgeoning entertainment industry. Students will also read recent scholarship on all aspects of the early modern metropolis. Lecture: Time: Weds/ Fr 12:45PM - 2:05PM Room: Jennings Hall 136 Instructor: Chris Highley MEDREN 5610, Manuscript Studies Description: This course introduces students to the pre-print culture of the European Middle Ages and trains them in the fundamental skills required to read and understand handwritten books, documents, and scrolls from ca AD. Students will work with manuscripts held in the OSU library s Special Collections and will benefit from numerous guest lectures. Knowledge of Latin and other medieval languages is NOT a prerequisite for enrollment. Required work includes five in-class tests and a final exam, a substantial transcription of Gothic script, an original research paper on a manuscript selected by the student, and several short written assignments and in-class presentations. Lecture: (undergrad), (grad) Time: Tues/Thurs 2:20-3:40 Room: Thompson Library 150A Instructors: Leslie Lockett and Eric J. Johnson Summer 2016 Nouvelles Nouvelles 15

16 Student Orgs. The Ohio State Medieval and Renaissance Graduate Student Association (MRGSA) is an organization created to provide graduate students in any department affiliated with the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies with opportunities for professionalization, skills development, and networking. MRGSA is led by a committee of graduate student officers, who are elected every year. Membership is open to anyone pursuing a relevant graduate degree at The Ohio State University, and we charge no dues or fees for involvement. If you are interested in becoming a member or getting involved with our activities, we welcome questions and comments at mrgsaosu@gmail.com. MRGSA 2016 Officers President: Carmen Meza (English) Vice President: Elizabeth Sandoval (History of Art) Treasurer: Heather Frazier (English) Secretary: Rebecca Howard (History of Art) Media Officers: María Salvador (History of Art) and Miguel Valerio (Spanish and Portuguese) General Committee: Dan Knapper (English) Discover more about MRGSA at mrgsa.org.ohio-state.edu. Members of the Undergraduate Organization, Mappa Mundi, pose with the organization s advisor and CMRS Program Coordinator Nick Spitulski after their organized session at Shakespeare s Day in February. Photo courtesy of Leslie Lockett. MAPPA MUNDI Mappa Mundi is an organization for Ohio State University undergraduate students interested in medieval, early modern, and Renaissance topics. The group encourages, supports, and advances student interest in these academic and leisurely pursuits through social events, guest lectures, and active participation in relevant campus-sponsored activities. The organization does not charge membership dues and is open to students from any academic discipline. For more information about the group or its forthcoming events, medren.mappamundi@gmail.com. You can also find Mappa Mundi on Facebook and on Twitter by using the Twitter 16 Nouvelles Nouvelles Summer 2016

17 2016 MRGSA Graduate Student Conference The Medieval and Renaissance Graduate Association at The Ohio State University would like to invite abstracts from any area of medieval and early modern studies for their fourth annual conference, to be held on October 14-15, 2016 in Columbus, OH. The theme of this years conference is Intersectionality. As a perspective, intersectionality examines overlapping systems of oppression and discrimination such as gender, race, class, disability, and religion. First termed by black legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality poses new questions for scholars across disciplines and challenges how we evaluate and understand political, historical, and literary realities across time. This conference hopes to start a discussion about intersectionality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance in all of its various forms by specifically focusing on questions of how and why certain ideological structures and ideas intersect, and what implications emerge of these overlappings. Themes may include but are not limited to: Empire Hybridity Institutions in flux Identities in transformation Migration and travel Constructions of race, class, and gender Social inequality Ideologies Fluidity of culture between periods Religious politics Reinterpretation through visual art and music Changing family structures Theatre production and performance Popular culture Pedagogy Authorship Time, space, and place Cross-cultural contact, exchange, and appropriation Individual Presentations: Presenters should plan to speak for minutes on a single topic related to Medieval or Renaissance studies. Abstracts of words should be sent to MRGSA via at mrgsaosu@gmail.com by August 31, All submissions should include the title of the paper, the abstract, as well as the name, the institutional affiliation, and contact information of the author. Chosen participants will be notified by no later than September 12, A $100 prize will be presented to the best paper at the conference. Interested parties should submit their final papers no later than October 7, MRGSA will evaluate participants based on quality of research, writing, and presentation. The winner will be notified after the conference. Last year s winner was Brice A. Peterson, Pennsylvania State University, for his paper Finding the Perfect Dietie Diett: Donne s Love s Deity and Love s Diet as Answer Poetry about Choice. If you have any questions, us at mrgsaosu@gmail.com. Summer 2016 Nouvelles Nouvelles 17

18 OF NOTE CALL FOR PAPERS: Texts and Contexts, October 21-22, 2016, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH Texts and Contexts is an annual conference held on the campus of the Ohio State University devoted to Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, incunables and early printed texts in Latin and the vernacular languages. The conference solicits papers particularly in the general discipline of manuscript studies, including palaeography, codicology, reception and text history. In addition to the general papers (of roughly 20 minutes), the conference also hosts the Virginia Brown Memorial Lecture, established in memory of the late Virginia Brown, who taught paleography at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies for some 40 years. We also welcome proposals for sessions of two to three papers which might treat a more focused topic. Please send abstracts to epig@osu.edu. Deadline for abstracts: August 15, CALL FOR PAPERS: 2016 Conference of the Texas Medieval Association September 23-25, 2016, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas Proposals on all topics in medieval studies are invited for TEMA Abstracts of individual papers and sets of abstracts for full sessions are equally welcome. We especially hope to attract papers and panels contributing to the 2016 conference theme: in shorthand, form, but invoking any word sharing this root. The numerous form terms, though divergent in meaning, all pertain to organization, configuration, or structured relations. Virtually any topic in any discipline can be viewed through its engagement with these concepts. Those who wish to connect to the conference theme may seek intersections of their areas of interest with ideas of transformation, information, conformity/non-conformity, performance, formulation, reformation, or any other component of the far-reaching form network. TEMA 2016 will feature a keynote address by musicologist and music historian Nancy van Deusen: We Prefer Gods We Can See : Forma, Figura, and Music s Representational Power. Professor van Deusen holds the Louis and Mildred Benezet Chair in the Humanities at Claremont Graduate University. Papers may be delivered in English or Spanish. If the presentation language will be Spanish, please specify this. Send abstracts (in English) of approximately 200 words to Britt Mize (bmize@tamu.edu) no later than August 1, Early submission is encouraged: rolling acceptance will begin on May 31, 2016, and space may become limited after this date. Among proposals for full sessions, those including participants from more than one institution will be given priority. A prize will be awarded for the best paper by a graduate student. CALL FOR PAPERS: Materiality and Performance 32nd Annual Conference of the Medieval Association of the Midwest October 6-8, 2016, The College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota This year s conference will coincide with the Folger Shakespeare First Folio Exhibit at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Attendees will be able to take in the exhibit as well as other related events marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare s death. The conference theme emphasizes performance and material culture. Organizers, however, will also welcome paper and session proposals on any topic related to medieval and early modern history, literature, and culture. The deadline for paper and session proposals is Friday, July 22, Please send proposals or inquiries via to William Hodapp at whodapp@css.edu. 18 Nouvelles Nouvelles Summer 2016

19 CALL FOR PAPERS: Encountering Shakespeare The 40th Annual Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference October 20-22, 2016, Wright State Universiy, Dayton, Ohio OF NOTE Keynote Speakers Curtis Perry (Professor of English at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Ayanna Thompson (Professor of English at George Washington University) The 2016 theme of Encountering Shakespeare invites presentations on historical, cultural, textual, and virtual experiences of Shakespeare. While an encounter denotes a casual meeting or fleeting exchange, it also carries the specter of adversity or discord, as in Prince Hal s anticipation of war s ravaging effect on the masses: In both your armies there is many a soul / Shall pay full dearly for this encounter (Henry IV, Part ). We encourage papers that explore Shakespeare encounters marked by conflict and unease, as well as projects tracing Shakespeare encounters through interrogation and insight. In a less common use of the word, encounter also indicates an approach, as in Sir Toby s question to Cesario: Will you encounter the house? (Twelfth Night ). He extends an invitation to enter Olivia s domain, stirring up the creative aspirations and energetic passion latent in Illyria. Encountering as crossing or entering is of particular interest for pedagogical approaches to Shakespeare. Whether by accidental acquaintance or by violent opposition, the characteristic feature of an encounter is that it is infused with the force of relevance. In this sense, how does an encounter between Shakespeare and other literary figures, genres, and contexts infuse new meaning to the literary expression? Furthermore, as global encounters are considered foci for reading political and social intersections between cultures and across audiences, global encounters of the Shakespeare kind are also welcome. The conference welcomes a range of encounters with Shakespeare today: as conflicted hallmark of humanist education, as trigger for cultural debates, and as a fraught figure of the privileges and limits of the canon. Proposals for papers of 20 minutes, roundtable topics, or panels of three or four members on Shakespeare s work and that of his contemporaries are welcome. Please send abstracts of words to 2016ovsc@gmail.com. Undergraduate students are invited to present their work during seminar-style roundtables. Participants will be asked to submit word abstracts, followed by 8-10 page papers for pre-circulation. Early acceptance letters will be sent on June 15, Deadline for full consideration is August 15, The OVSC publishes a volume of selected papers each year and conferees are welcome to submit revised versions of their papers for consideration. Students who present are eligible to compete for the M. Rick Smith Memorial Prize. Questions or submissions can be directed to Carol Mejia LaPerle at 2016ovsc@gmail.com CONFERENCE REMINDER: SEMA 2016 The 55th meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association (SEMA) will be hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and University of Tennessee Knoxville and will take place at the Downtown Hilton, Knoxville, Tennessee on October 6-8, This year s conference date coincides with the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings and takes up the theme of Place and Power in recognition of that important event. Sessions will address a broad array of topics, and several sessions will also be devoted to undergraduate research. More information can be found at southeasternmedieval.wordpress.com. Summer 2016 Nouvelles Nouvelles 19

20 CENTER FOR MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES 455 HAGERTY HALL 1775 COLLEGE ROAD COLUMBUS OH NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID COLUMBUS, OHIO PERMIT NO. 711 In Our Next Issue: Popular Culture and the Deep Past IV Ubi Sunt? Meet the MRGSA Officers CMRS Affiliate Directory